Seems like Thanksgiving just happened and then you knock out Christmas and Hanukkah, and, man, am I full. I’d been dreaming about mashed potatoes and cornbread dressing for more than a month and one season didn’t cut it. But despite being a time for food festivities, the holidays were also…
Where would you expect to see an original work by the great Pablo Picasso or Henri Matisse? What about Vincent van Gogh, Claude Monet, Rembrandt van Rijn, Piet Mondrian or Paul Gauguin? Most folks would venture a museum or Christie’s auction, possibly an art gallery if it were big-time. But…
Starting at 5:45 p.m. Tuesday, The Gingerman (2718 Boll St.) offers a can’t-miss keep-the-glass night for fans of dark beers, as North Coast Old Rasputin is an incredibly strong and complex Russian imperial stout. While you’re there, donate canned goods (no, that doesn’t mean sixers of Miller High Life–though Dale’s…
Seven months after its theatrical release in the U.K., and two months after its DVD debut there, Pirate Radio washes ashore in U.S. theaters with a different title (it was formerly known as The Boat That Rocked) and most of its better bits excised. Writer-director Richard Curtis, paying homage to…
Completing his multi-film vendetta against the world’s tourist trade, German-born director Roland Emmerich sends the mother of all storms to level the Washington Monument, the Eiffel Tower and a priest-filled Vatican City, among other locales, in his newest end-times thriller, 2012. From Independence Day (1996) to The Day After Tomorrow…
In her broad outlines, Claireece Precious Jones risks sounding like the epitome of ghetto cliché: an obese, illiterate 16-year-old; mother to a 4-year-old Down syndrome daughter and now pregnant again; physically and psychologically abused by her mother; repeatedly raped by her father, who is also the father of her own…
Small theaters around Dallas once again are brimming with big ideas and hot talent. The show to see right now—one that will make you excited about live theater, even if you haven’t been to a play in years—is Upstart Productions and Project X’s staging of Eric Bogosian’s Talk Radio. Launching…
As opening nights go, Dallas Theater Center’s October 30 season premiere of Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream was a resounding dud. Before a house stuffed with local dignitaries, board members, trophy wives, donors and press, the show started nearly a half-hour late, delayed by dull speeches from portly millionaires congratulating…
The secret is out. Warner Bros. waited to unwrap The Box until two days before its opening because, compared to its madcap predecessors—the psychotic Holden Caulfield update Donnie Darko and the delirious welcome-to-the-21st-century extravaganza Southland Tales—the new Richard Kelly movie is basically a sock of coal for Christmas. A mysterious…
It’s not hard to see how the director of Forrest Gump would be thought a good fit to adapt the dearly beloved Dickens tale that has survived nearly two centuries of retelling. Stuffed with simple souls winning over a stingy misanthrope to the view that life is a box of…
Historical cataclysm produces conspiratorial thinking: Germany’s loss in World War I, the JFK assassination and 9/11 are all naturally understood as the stuff of unimaginable plots, unspeakable cover-ups and unseen forces. The guys who made The Men Who Stare at Goats can’t quite decide whether this syndrome is risible or…
Whenever my mother ticked me off when I was a kid, I would pantomime pulling an electrical cord from a wall socket. It was part of an ongoing family joke that I would eagerly pull the plug on her life-support system if she were hospitalized for so much as a…
There’s such a thing as unhealthy family dysfunction. And in Sam Shepard’s A Lie of the Mind, dysfunction is so rampant, the family is beyond repair. The play takes place in the American West, where two families are brought together through the marriage of Jake and Beth. Beating his wife…
Like no other piece of apparel, purses have become an instant announcement of status and wealth (the ubiquitous Louis Vuitton), and they can even offer a comment on societal issues (Anya Hindmarch’s I’m Not a Plastic Bag) or a satirical smirk (Longchamp’s Ceci est un It Bag). The trinkets–and secrets–that…
Ready, set, donate! The Mwamba Family Foundation and all-pro bowler Al Wilson present Fight for Five, a charity campaign seeking to raise awareness for the Democratic Republic of Congo. You can help donate toward the building of the Mwamba Sports and Education Academy by attending the Fight For Five dinner…
I don’t need a special reason to eat, but chomping down for a good cause is a pretty tasty idea. Proceeds from The Taste of Lee Park will support cystic fibrosis research and the upkeep of the park. Cuisine from Campisi’s, Grimaldi’s, Lumi, The Social House and Red Mango is…
For such a white-bread (or more specifically, as he describes himself, “fake Italian–like Olive Garden”) comedian, Mike Birbiglia makes some pretty funny observations about hip-hop. “I love Jay-Z. He’s so good at rapping that sometimes he doesn’t even rhyme–he’ll just end a line in ‘-izzah.’ I ain’t playing Scrabble with…
I took a tap-dance class in college, and every morning after class I would whirl around my dorm room, slapping the steel tips of my shoes against the brown linoleum. When the hall called a wing meeting about the “noise problem,” they didn’t mention the people who blared Britney Spears…
You have to give the organizers of the Chile Pepperama Festival at Old Town Shopping Center credit. They don’t shy away from asking the hard question, as in: Who makes the best chili in town? This is Texas, after all, and no question short of “Who has the best religion?”…
There is a long, checkered history of “one-man shows” and “performance art” dating as far back as Hal Holbrook, Karen Finley and the Fluxus art movement. Probably even further. It seems that the latest celebrity to throw his old-ass hat into the arena is the one and only Billy Crystal…
Listen up, men. There’s nothing more attractive than a beautiful blond woman who can yodel. Yes, yodel. And that’s just one of the many talents three-time Grammy-nominated singer and songwriter Jewel has to offer. Originally born in Alaska, Jewel Kilcher is the granddaughter of an aspiring opera singer and has…
I’m sick of misnomers. Guinea pigs aren’t pigs and aren’t from Guinea. Ringworm doesn’t come from a worm. Why can’t the people in charge just do the right thing? I think Michelle L’amour, Miss Exotic World 2005, feels the same way I do because when she started up the Naked…
